Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) is primarily used to obtain protocol addresses of neighboring devices and discover the platform of those devices. CDP can also be used to show information about the interfaces your router uses. CDP is media- and protocol-independent, and runs on all Cisco-manufactured equipment including routers, bridges, access servers, and switches.
Use of SNMP with the CDP Management Information Base (MIB) allows network management applications to learn the device type and the SNMP agent address of neighboring devices, and to send SNMP queries to those devices. Cisco Discovery Protocol uses the CISCO-CDP-MIB.
CDP runs on all media that support Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP), including local-area network (LAN), Frame Relay, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) physical media. CDP runs over the data link layer only. Therefore, two systems that support different network-layer protocols can learn about each other.
Each device configured for CDP sends periodic messages, known as advertisements, to a multicast address. Each device advertises at least one address at which it can receive SNMP messages. The advertisements also contain time-to-live, or holdtime, information, which indicates the length of time a receiving device should hold CDP information before discarding it. Each device also listens to the periodic CDP messages sent by others in order to learn about neighboring devices and determine when their interfaces to the media go up or down.
CDP Version-2 (CDPv2), the most recent release of the protocol, provides more intelligent device tracking features. These features include a reporting mechanism which allows for more rapid error tracking, thereby reducing costly downtime. Reported error messages can be sent to the console or to a logging server, and cover instances of unmatching native VLAN IDs (IEEE 802.1Q) on connecting ports, and unmatching port duplex states between connecting devices.
Protocol Structure - CDP: Cisco Discovery Protocol
CDPv2 show commands can provide detailed output on VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) management domain and duplex modes of neighbor devices, CDP-related counters, and VLAN IDs of connecting ports. The following table lists the CDP commands:
| Command | Purpose |
| clear cdp counters | Resets the traffic counters to zero. |
| clear cdp table | Deletes the CDP table of information about neighbors. |
| show cdp | Displays the interval between transmissions of CDP advertisements, the number of seconds the CDP advertisement is valid for a given port, and the version of the advertisement. |
| show cdp entry entry-name [protocol | version] | Displays information about a specific neighbor. Display can be limited to protocol or version information. |
| show cdp interface [type number] | Displays information about interfaces on which CDP is enabled. |
| show cdp neighbors [type number] [detail] | Displays the type of device that has been discovered, the name of the device, the number and type of the local interface (port), the number of seconds the CDP advertisement is valid for the port, the device type, the device product number, and the port ID. Issuing the detail keyword displays information on the native VLAN ID, the duplex mode, and the VTP domain name associated with neighbor devices. |
| show cdp traffic | Displays CDP counters, including the number of packets sent and received and checksum errors. |
| show debugging | Displays information about the types of debugging that are enabled for your router. See the Cisco IOS Debug Command Reference for more information about CDP debug commands |
Sponsor Source: CDP is a Cisco protocol.
Reference Links: http://www.cisco.com/: Configuring the Cisco Discovery Protocol